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Community metabolism of a coral reef exposed to naturally varying dissolved inorganic nutrient loads

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Abstract

Daily community rates of calcification, photosynthesis and respiration were measured on a coral reef located in the Northern Red Sea, Gulf of Eilat, Israel between March 2000 and March 2002. This reef is exposed to seasonally varying levels of inorganic nutrient loading due to mixing and stratification of the adjacent open sea water column. Net production measurements were positively and linearly correlated with open sea nutrient levels, and the community photosynthesis to respiration ratio varied between 0.9 and 1.7 accordingly. Community calcification varied between 30 ± 20 and 60 ± 20 mmol C m−2 day−1 during summer and winter, respectively. Under increased nutrient loading the relation between community calcification and aragonite saturation state is suppressed by 30% on average. Both of these findings demonstrate the deleterious effects of nutrient loading on coral reefs.

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Acknowledgements

Funding for this project was provided by the Israel Science Foundation and US-AID. We acknowledge the technical assistance in the field of: M. Dray, T. Rivlin, A. Rivlin, M. Lazarovich, R. Shem-Tov, the help of the staff at the Marine Biology Laboratory (IUI), Eilat and the use of facilities as members (BL, JE) of The Moshe Shilo Center for Marine Biogeochemistry.

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  1. Jacob Silverman

    Present address: Department of Environmental and Energy Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, P.O. Box 26, Rehovot, 76100, Israel

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  1. Institute of Earth Sciences, Edmond Safra Campus of Natural Sciences, Givat Ram, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Jacob Silverman, Boaz Lazar & Jonathan Erez

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Correspondence to Jacob Silverman.

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Silverman, J., Lazar, B. & Erez, J. Community metabolism of a coral reef exposed to naturally varying dissolved inorganic nutrient loads. Biogeochemistry 84, 67–82 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10533-007-9075-5

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